Jumping Ship
Sorry for the long lapse in posting, but I started a new job a few weeks ago, and I’m still adjusting to the schedule. I also don’t know what their blogging policy is, so I’m going to keep things vague for now about the company. What I will tell you for now is that it’s a much larger company than I have ever worked for, by a factor of about 30. This is obviously a bit of an adjustment, but I’m starting to get a handle on the way things work for such a large company.
Why did I change jobs? Don’t get me wrong, I loved my old job. I was the main security guru in the place, and I had my hands in every IT-related project that came through. I enjoyed working there, and the majority of my coworkers were great people. It came down to some advantages that the new position offered that the old one simply didn’t:
1. I was “recruited.” - Never discount the power of ego. I hadn’t posted an updated resume in over 6 months, but this company came looking for me anyway. It felt good to be sought after, instead of doing the seeking.
2. Location - I had an awful commute at my old job. On an average day, it would take between 1-1.5 hours to travel in each direction. Forget about days when it was raining or snowing.
3. Compensation - Not that I was that underpaid or anything, but the new company made an offer right off the bat that was a considerable increase in my salary.
4. Larger company - With a larger company comes a larger and more complex and diverse infrastructure. While I may have worked on firewalls from vendors such as Cisco and Juniper, I have never had the opportunity to work on a Check Point.
5. Larger team - As I mentioned, I was the main security guy at my last place. Not that I have a problem with that, but I’ve only been in the security field for a few years, and I know I still have a lot to learn. This place puts me in a team with a number of highly experienced security professionals. I may be a little out of my depth at times, but I can learn a lot from the people I’m working with.
That last reason is probably the biggest reason for making the jump. I do my best to keep expanding my security knowledge by reading and testing out new tools, but there is something to be said for working with people who have been doing for a lot longer, and who are more than willing to answer any question I can throw at them.
We’ll see how it goes. My first couple of projects involve firewall management centralization and network compliance management. I’ll post again soon with some details on the products I’m looking at.
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Hi John,
I came across your blog via the security bloggers network, and this post definitely hit me as it has to do with my current situation, and maybe you can spare some advice to a network security newbie who is several years behind you in experience. I’ve got a masters degree in telecom network management from a prestigious US university, and had been working for a financial services company about a year. My ambition and drive got the best of me there, and I was let go (getting fired sounds so much more harsh) on my 10 month anniversary with the company. It was a long time coming as I was the young buck network engineer wanting to get my hands dirty on anything and everything network security related. I did a majority of the day-to-day management on our CP firewall cluster and handled most of the layer 2 internal LAN management on a network of about 400. I kept asking for more and was told to ’sit down and do your job’ which included lots of stuff that I just totally lost interest in.
Now I am out looking for a new job in the same field in the NE’rn United States and finding that the job descriptions fit me perfectly for new positions, except for the “3-5″ or “5-7 years of experience.” How does a young guy like me, not to too my own horn too much, but bright, level headed, looking to learn, but without a lot of “real world” experience break back in? What is the best way to appeal to companies in our line of work without falling into the chicken-or-egg debate about how do I gain my years of experience without a job that will let me enter at (a-little-above) entry level?
thanks,
jf